Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 16, 2025
by Tony Wikrent
Elite impunity
The Corrupt Roots of America’s Elite Run Deep
David Kurtz, November 13, 2025 [Talking Points Memo]
In reviewing a portion of the 20,000-plus Jeffrey Epstein emails released yesterday, I was left astonished not so much by the chumminess he enjoyed with elites even after he’d served time for soliciting prostitution with a minor but by the messages’ flagrantness, their casual disregard, and their indifference to consequence.
It was perfectly captured by political scientist Ed Burmila: “The crisis of elite impunity that is ruining our society cannot be more clearly or convincingly demonstrated than with the fact that all of these people wrote all this stuff into an email and hit Send.”
Impunity. That’s the word I was looking for.
It is the same impunity that got us Trump. Like Epstein, Trump built a career on a transactional chumminess, mutual self-indulgence, and an alarmingly high tolerance level for misbehavior by the layers of political, business, media, and cultural elites surrounding him.
At it’s most extreme, the misbehavior manifested in both men as abusive sexual misconduct. It’s one of the oddities of this whole spectacle that the question is whether Trump — already an admitted pussy grabber, held liable as a sexual assaulter, and prone to traipsing through his pageant dressing rooms to gawk at young flesh — was also engaged in another kind of sexual misconduct, as if stacking revelations high enough will finally overcome the elite impunity that’s cosseted Trump for more than 40 years….
Liberal Elites Kicked the Door Wide Open for Trump’s Flagrant Corruption
Dylan Gyauch-Lewis, November 9 2025 [The Intercept]
…While Trumpian corruption is striking in frequency, scale, and just how routine it is starting to feel, this administration was the logical endpoint of the long-standing tradition of elite impunity. The second Trump administration is a striking monument to governmental misconduct, but the ground was broken long ago, with both parties laying the foundation. For the past half century, corporate and white-collar crime have gone largely unenforced. This was the result of both a widespread shift in views of governance (à la the Reagan Revolution) and a coordinated plan orchestrated to enable private wealth to hijack our democracy, as David Sirota and Jared Jacang Maher documented in their new book “Master Plan,” building on a podcast of the same name.
Trump himself is a byproduct of the wealthy being empowered to violate the law. Seemingly his entire pre-government career was predicated on getting away with gaming bankruptcy law, committing widespread financial fraud, and racial discrimination. Now, in government, he is employing the “blitzscaling” model pioneered by firms like Uber to break the law faster than anyone can keep up with….
The Great Recession was a turning point; the extent of corporate lawbreaking in the financial sector was laid bare. And, famously, hardly anyone ever went to jail. Obama-era regulators, in many ways the acme of our last half-century of the hands-off approach to ruling-class misconduct, earned rebuke and scorn as “the chickenshit club,” afraid to square up against the powerful, if not overtly committed to serve elite interests. Since 2008, it has only become more apparent that the wealthy play by an entirely different set of rules.
Trump’s first election was, in part, built on the argument that he knew “how to play the game.” In this telling, his ability to break the rules was actually an asset because he would break them for you rather than just for the powerful. It was always a dubious pitch, but it’s understandable why — faced with the choice between someone trying to convince you the game that’s obviously been fixed is actually not rigged, and someone who tells you how they cheat and promise to help you get ahead a little bit — people would gravitate toward the latter. Part of the early MAGA mythos was built on resignation to the fact that our rule of law is fundamentally perverted to create two parallel tracks of justice: an unforgiving, punitive, carceral system for most people, and a cushy, consequence-free dinner party circuit for the ruling class.
Dethroning Trump will not be enough to restore real rule of law; the Biden administration is proof enough of that. Donald Trump was excised from the White House with historically bad public sentiment in the immediate aftermath of a failed coup. Under Biden, the Garland Justice Department tried to wind the clock back to 2016 and resume operating the way establishment politicians did in the 1990s and 2000s. It failed spectacularly, allowing bad actors like Elon Musk to grow ever more powerful while continuing to flout the law with impunity. The result was an embittered Trump who faced no real repercussions for his corruption — the worst-case scenario….
To dislodge the hold that corruption has on our government and restore the rule of law, Democrats will need to decide who they really are — and who they’ll fight for.
[TW: More accurately, Democrats will need to decide who they’ll fight against.]
Trump not violating any law
‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’
Joe DePaolo, May 4th, 2025 [mediaite.com]
We now know why Trump’s DOJ prosecuted Epstein in 2019—and why he died in Trump’s custody
Dean Obeidallah, Nov 13, 2025
The new Epstein document dump tell us many things. But my takeaway is this: Jeffrey Epstein in 2018/early 2019 was increasingly telling people he knew how “dirty Donald” was, that Trump “knew about the girls” and that “I am the one able to take him down.” That means Epstein poised a huge problem to Trump’s 2020 re-election—and more.
To protect Trump, his DOJ suddenly charged Epstein in July 2019. They then denied Epstein bail—forcing him to remain in the custody of the Trump regime. And just a few weeks later, Epstein conveniently committed “suicide.” Trump’s Epstein problem—at least for the 2020 campaign—was over.
Now I will concede there is a level of speculation to this theory. That is why I’m not writing it as a statement of fact but rather one of opinion. But if you see the facts and timeline, it’s clear a full investigation needs to be conducted—either now by a Democratic state Attorney General or by House Democrats if they win the 2026 midterm….
Letters from an American, November 10, 2025
Heather Cox Richardson, Nov 11, 2025
Tucked within that last appropriation is a measure that allows the eight Republican senators whose phone logs were seized during former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation of the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, to sue the government for up to $500,000 apiece….
The eight senators who voted with the Republicans appear to have lost any hope Trump would negotiate and, in that absence, decided they had to relieve the pain of the shutdown. As Dan Drezner noted in his Drezner’s World, Trump’s behavior during the shutdown made it clear he simply didn’t care how badly Americans got hurt. “He did not just refuse to negotiate,” Drezner noted. “During the shutdown month he also completely bulldozed the East Wing, cut SNAP benefits, witnessed producers passing on the cost of tariffs to consumers, announced curbs on air travel, and participated in a Great Gatsby–style party at Mar-a-Lago.”….
President Donald J. Trump did not want the shutdown to end this way. He was trying to use the pain he was inflicting on the American people to force Republican senators to end the filibuster and pass a series of measures that would essentially have made him a dictator. The Republican senators were clear they didn’t want to do that. And now, they haven’t. They chose a way out of the shutdown fight that did not support Trump’s ambitions. After nine months in which they appeared to do his bidding, that’s an interesting development.
Trump does not appear to be giving up his position on hurting the country easily. Late last night, three judges from the First Circuit refused to stop the lower court order saying that the administration must pay SNAP benefits in full, and today, the administration went back to the Supreme Court to ask it to freeze those payments.
Trump also posted an attack on air traffic controllers, saying to those who took time off during the shutdown “I am NOT HAPPY WITH YOU. You didn’t step up to help the U.S.A. against the FAKE DEMOCRAT ATTACK that was only meant to hurt our Country. You will have a negative mark, at least in my mind, against your record. If you want to leave service in the near future, please do not hesitate to do so, with NO payment or severance of any kind! You will be quickly replaced by true Patriots, who will do a better job….”
The Bombshell Inside Trump’s $1.3 Billion Pardon Market — The Pardon for Pay President
Christopher Armitage, Nov 09, 2025 [The Existentialist Republic]
In December 2020, federal prosecutors unsealed evidence of a presidential pardon bribery scheme during Trump’s first term. Court documents revealed a “bribery conspiracy” involving “substantial political contribution in exchange for a presidential pardon.” No charges were filed. Four years later, Trump returned to office and issued clemency to more than 1,600 individuals in his first 10 months. For context, Obama issued 1,927 grants over eight years. Biden issued fewer than 200 over four years. Trump’s first term produced 237 over four years. Trump’s current pace exceeds all modern presidents combined. These pardons have eliminated $1.3 billion in court-ordered restitution and fines owed to crime victims. Documented payments to Trump, his family businesses, and his allies preceded many of them.
Trevor Milton founded Nikola, an electric truck company. In October 2022, a jury convicted him of securities fraud after prosecutors proved he deceived investors with a viral video showing a prototype truck appearing to drive under its own power. The truck was actually rolling downhill after being towed to the top. The jury deliberated for hours after a two-month trial. Federal prosecutors sought $695.2 million in restitution from Milton, including $680 million to Nikola shareholders and $15.2 million to wire fraud victim Peter Hicks. Many investors lost retirement savings during the COVID-19 pandemic and waited for repayment.
In October 2024, Milton and his wife donated more than $1.8 million to Trump’s reelection campaign. Milton personally contributed $920,000 to the Trump 47 Committee and $284,000 to the RNC. The combined total represented one of the largest individual contributions to Trump that cycle.
Five months later, on March 27, 2025, Trump personally called Milton to inform him of his pardon. Trump granted it the next day. The pardon eliminated both Milton’s four-year prison sentence and the $695.2 million restitution obligation. Investors will never be repaid.
The return on Milton’s “investment” to Trump was 37,400 percent….
Infighting at DHS Is Complicating Trump’s Deportation Push
WSJ, via Naked Capitalism 11-10-2025]
“A few weeks ago, [Noem and Lewandowski] ordered ICE officials to buy 10 737 jets from Spirit Airlines that they said would be used to boost deportation flights—and for their own travel…Once officials looked into the proposal, they learned that Spirit, which filed for bankruptcy for a second time in August, didn’t own the planes. The planes also don’t have engines…”
Firm Tied to Kristi Noem Secretly Got Money From $220 Million DHS Ad Contracts
[ProPublica, via Naked Capitalism 11-15-2025]
Photos, Video, Protests — Homeland Security Tightens Rule on Anti-ICE Activities
Kate Morrissey, November 11, 2025 [capitalandmain.com]
The Department of Homeland Security suddenly moved up the implementation of a rule change that gives the Federal Protective Service, the agency charged with protecting federal buildings, more power to charge people with crimes for a variety of activities on or near federal property.
The regulation, which went into effect on Nov. 5, prohibits a wide range of activities, including creating a loud or unusual noise, distributing informational materials and flying drones. It makes it illegal for people to wear masks to conceal their identities if they break any federal or state law or local ordinance. It forbids obstructing access to federal property or impeding operations there and specifically calls out photography and videography….
Jon Queally, Nov 15, 2025 [CommonDreams]
Of 614 people on list who may have been unlawfully arrested and detained by federal officials, only 16 had a criminal record of any kind.
ICE, National Guard Deployments Just the Beginning
[Ken Klippenstein, via Naked Capitalism 11-13-2025]
Trump Escalates War on Leftists With Antifa Foreign Terror Label
[Ken Klippenstein, via Naked Capitalism 11-14-2025]
Justice Department Office Which Justified Torture Now Argues For Killing
[Moon of Alabama, via Naked Capitalism 11-14-2025]
ICE Caged This Man For His Instagram Posts And Likes
Spencer Ackerman, 11 Nov 2025 [forever-wars.com]
The Precedent is Dead: We have to recognize the realities of our situation
Christopher Armitage, Nov 12, 2025 [The Existentialist Republic]
[X-Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 11-15-2025]
Want to look through Jeffrey Epstein’s documents yourself? We published a searchable database of the entire set of new Epstein files and emails. Despite Trump saying this is a scam, Trump is mentioned more than anyone else. Search for yourself here: https://journaliststudio.google.com/pinpoint/search?collection=2283eeed70befac7
[Un-Diplomatic, via Naked Capitalism 11-14-2025]
…What you probably haven’t heard about Epstein is that he was also one of the world’s preeminent geopoliticians, which is why he entangled so many powerful people in his misdeeds. The human-trafficking sexcapades were not the main thing bringing him together with his pedo friends. It was money and power politics, forming a vital artery of US global hegemony.
Epstein—as a broker between Israeli intelligence and foreign oligarchs and kleptocrats—was also a creature whose existence owed to the structure of American hegemony, aka the neoliberal economic order, aka the era of neoliberal globalization.
It’s not often we get to peek under the hood of geopolitics to see its inner workings, but Drop Site News has some of the most mind-blowing investigative reveals I’ve ever read. As primary sources go, the documents that Murtaza Hussain and Ryan Grim got ahold of says so much more about how the world works than anything in the Snowden or Chelsea Manning dumps from the Obama years….
Jeffrey Epstein’s vast web of powerful friends
Maegan Vazquez, Nov 14, 2025 [The Washington Post]
The recently released messages, which range from the inane to efforts to pull the levers of power, feature members of both political parties….
Kathryn Ruemmler, President Barack Obama’s White House counsel, comes up repeatedly in Epstein’s messages, including in messages where Ruemmler mused about whether she should try to become attorney general. Ruemmler is now chief legal officer for Goldman Sachs….
Warmongers
Secret Boat Strike Memo Justifies Killings By Claiming the Target Is Drugs, Not People
Nick Turse, November 14 2025 [The Intercept]
…Amid mounting questions from senior military and civilian lawyers about the legality of proposed strikes on civilian boats, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel this summer produced a classified opinion intended to shield service members up and down the chain of command from prosecution, according to three government officials.
The legal theory advanced in the finding, two sources said, differs from some of President Donald Trump’s public statements on the killings. It claims that narcotics on the boats are lawful military targets because their cargo generates revenue for cartels whom the Trump administration claims are in armed conflict with the U.S….
How The CIA & Mossad Set Up Sudan for Genocide since the 1990s
November 7th, 2025, Mnar Adley [mintpressnews.com]
…Sudan sits on a fault line connecting the Red Sea, the Sahel, and the Horn of Africa — regions central to China’s Belt and Road Initiative and Russia’s trade networks.
Its ports could link Africa’s mineral wealth to a new, multipolar economy no longer dependent on the U.S. dollar.
For Washington, this is an existential threat.
China’s Belt and Road offers nations like Sudan an escape from the IMF, the World Bank, and the petrodollar system that have trapped the Global South in debt for decades.
If Sudan joined that network, it could connect Africa’s gold, oil, and mineral wealth directly to Beijing — bypassing Western control entirely.
That’s what Washington fears most….
Strategic Political Economy
Rise in premature deaths prevents Americans from reaching age of Medicare eligibility, study finds
[McKnights, via Naked Capitalism 11-14-2025]
Deaths among adults ages 18-65 increased by 27% from 2012 to 2022, according to an analysis of federal mortality data from all 50 states published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Health Forum.
Gaza / Palestine / Israel
Shaun King, Nov 11, 2025
The Member States Complicit in Genocide (w/ Francesca Albanese)
Chris Hedges, Nov 12, 2025
Francesca Albanese’s new report examines how 60+ countries are complicit in Israel’s war crimes and how their contributions will come back to haunt their own citizens.
90% of Gaza’s Population faces malnutrition amid severe aid restrictions, UN warns
[Defend Democracy Press, Nov 15, 2025]
The eugenicist history of the Zionist movement
Zachary Foster [via Naked Capitalism 11-10-2025]
Biden Discussed Potential Israeli War Crimes In Gaza. He Kicked The Can To Trump.
[Huff Post, via Naked Capitalism 11-10-2025]
Shaun King, Nov 10, 2025
Shaun King, Nov 10, 2025
Rescue Teams Dig Up Over 50 Bodies Buried in Shallow Graves in Courtyard of Gaza City Clinic
[Drop Site, via Naked Capitalism 11-13-2025]
Israeli crowd applauds soldiers accused of raping Palestinian prisoner
[Middle East Eye, via Naked Capitalism 11-13-2025]
Felonomics
Challenger Report: US Job Cuts Reach Highest October Total Since 2003
Anna Smith, Nov. 11, 2025 [Industry Week]
October job cuts were up 183% compared to September and 175% from October 2024.
U.S.-based companies reported 153,074 job cuts last month, the highest total number of job cuts for the month of October in over 20 years, according to the October Challenger Report from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. This figure brings the total number of job cuts in 2025 to 1,099,500, a 65% increase from the same 10-month period last year.
Foreclosures surge 20% as Americans struggle to pay mortgages — and fears of 2008-style crash soar
[Daily Mail, via Naked Capitalism 11-15-2025]
Record number of subprime borrowers miss car loan payments in October, data shows
[Reuters, via Naked Capitalism 11-15-2025]
Car loan delinquencies are surging. Here’s what to do if you’re falling behind.
[Yahoo! Finance, via Naked Capitalism 11-13-2025]
Under Trump, Inflation Is Costing Average US Family $700 More Per Month
Jake Johnson, November 13, 2025 [CommonDreams]
Democrats on the congressional Joint Economic Committee released a report Thursday detailing how much more the average American family in every US state is having to spend monthly to cover the rising costs of food, shelter, energy, and other necessities under the leadership of President Donald Trump.
The panel released its report on the same day the Trump administration was supposed to publish the October Consumer Price Index (CPI) data. The closely watched CPI report was delayed by the shutdown, and the Trump White House said Wednesday that it’s likely the figures will never be released….
Russ Vought Tries to Bankrupt the CFPB
David Dayen, November 12, 2025 [The American Prospect]
…It’s yet another attempt to dismantle an agency that Congress established by statute, based on tortured textual readings. This comes at a time when credit card, student loan, and automotive loan delinquencies are at or near record highs since the CFPB was established in 2010. As unemployment increases, having a zombie regulator of consumer debt would be catastrophic. But that’s what Vought has determinedly sought for months….
How the Trump Administration Is Giving Even More Tax Breaks to the Wealthy
Jesse Drucker, November 08, 2025 [New York Times]
With little public scrutiny, the Trump administration is handing out hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts to some of the country’s most profitable companies and wealthiest investors.The Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service, through a series of new notices and proposed regulations, are giving breaks to giant private equity firms, crypto companies, foreign real estate investors, insurance providers and a variety of multinational corporations.The primary target: The administration is rapidly gutting a 2022 law intended to ensure that a sliver of the country’s most profitable corporations pay at least some federal income tax. The provision, the corporate alternative minimum tax, was passed by Democrats and signed into law by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. It sought to stop corporations like Microsoft, Amazon and Johnson & Johnson from being able to report big profits to shareholders yet low tax liabilities to the federal government. It was projected to raise $222 billion over a decade….
The carnage of mainstream neoliberal economics
[The Nation, via Naked Capitalism 11-14-2025]
One of Israel’s biggest companies is taking over huge swaths of US real estate—and tenants are paying the price.
Yes It’s an AI Bubble. Here’s Why
[Bloomberg, via Naked Capitalism 11-11-2025]
[Yves Smith: “Albert Edwards was particularly good in the runup to the 2008 crisis.” ]
Health care crisis
For-profit healthcare is the problem, not (just) private equity
Cory Doctorow, 13 Nov 2025 [Pluralistic]
… as Elle Rothermich writes for LPE Journal, the PE model of hospice is merely a more extreme and visible version of the ghastly outcomes that arise out of all for-profit hospice care:
https://lpeproject.org/blog/hospice-commodification-and-the-limits-of-antitrust/
The problems of PE-owned hospices are not merely a problem of the lack of competition, and applying antitrust to PE rollups of hospices won’t stop the carnage, though it would certainly improve things somewhat. While once American hospices were run by nonprofits and charities, that changed in 1983 with the introduction of Medicare’s hospice benefit. Today, three quarters of US hospices are private.
It’s not just PE-backed hospices; the entire for-profit hospice sector is worse than the nonprofit alternative. For-profit hospices deliver worse care and worse outcomes at higher prices. They are the worst-performing hospices in the country.
This is because (as Rothermich writes) “The actual provision of care—the act of healing or attempting to heal—is broadly understood to be something more than a purely economic transaction.” In other words, patients are not customers. In the hierarchy of institutional obligations, “patients” rank higher than customers. To be transformed from a “patient” into a “customer” is to be severely demoted….
Josh Stein demanded NC Republicans fund Medicaid. You can’t make us, they said.
Michael McElroy, November 14, 2025 [Cardinal & Pine]
Republican leaders in the North Carolina General Assembly refused Gov. Josh Stein’s recent order demanding they hold a special session to address the state’s urgent Medicaid shortfall.
Stein, who under state law can order lawmakers to return to the legislature but can’t order them to hold a vote, issued the rare move last week, highlighting the harmful effect of the cuts in reimbursement rates his administration made to Medicaid providers. The cuts came after Republican leadership failed to pass a budget to fill a shortfall in the state’s Medicaid program.
Phil Berger, the NC Senate majority leader, and NC House Speaker Destin Hall sent a letter to Stein on Thursday, saying Stein could not call a special session because lawmakers technically were still in the previous session. There will be some activity in the legislature on Nov. 17, but no votes. And the governor can’t make them vote, they said.
State law says special sessions can be called only in “extraordinary circumstances.” Berger and Hall said these circumstances were not extraordinary….
A “mini-budget” passed by the NC General Assembly at the end of July fell $319 million short of what the state needs to pay Medicaid providers. State health officials warned lawmakers that unless they filled that gap with new legislation, they would have to make steep cuts on Oct. 1 in order to avoid catastrophic cuts later on.
Lawmakers dismissed those concerns. When legislators to Raleigh returned the last week of September, the House and Senate passed separate bills intended to fill the gap. The votes were unanimous in both chambers. Not a single lawmaker voted against either bill.
But Berger and Hall could not resolve the relatively minor differences between their respective chamber’s versions, and no final bill was passed. Then lawmakers left town again….
Republicans’ wave of health care woes
Thomas Mills, Nov 14, 2025 [PoliticsNC]
…Governor Josh Stein called the legislature back into session to address a short-fall in the Medicaid fund. Republican leaders Phil Berger and Destin Hall responded with a process argument, claiming Stein can’t dictate their calendar. They called it “an unconstitutional attempt to usurp the General Assembly’s authority.” That’s rich coming from the people who have spent the last decade stripping power from the governor and gerrymandering Congressional seats.
This is the same legislature that has failed to pass a budget and now is complaining that the governor is asking them to come back to work. They’re taking their cues from U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, who kept the U.S. House of Representatives on vacation for more than a month during the Trump shutdown. As Stein pointed out, they came back to Raleigh to steal a Congressional seat but won’t come back to help North Carolinians who need health care….
Shutdown Deal Kills Food Safety Rules
Freddy Brewster & Luke Goldstein, Nov 11, 2025 [The Lever]
Amid a lobbying blitz and a flood of campaign cash, senators inserted language into this week’s emergency spending bill that eliminates rules designed to prevent food contamination and foodborne illnesses at farms and restaurants, according to legislative text reviewed by The Lever.…
The Senate’s gutting of these rules coincides with a huge increase in hospitalizations and deaths from foodborne illnesses. The changes follow restaurant and food industry lobbyists spending more than $13 million in 2025 lobbying the White House, Congress, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and other regulators on food-tracking issues and other matters, disclosures show….
Restoring balance to the economy
The War on Algorithmic Price Fixing Is Here
Pat Garofalo [via Naked Capitalism 11-12-2025]
…According to a study done by the Biden administration’s Council on Economic Advisors, the effect of these tools in rental markets was $3.8 billion in higher rent payments in 2023. Multiply that across food, tourism, senior care, and who knows where else, and we’re talking about a lot of money being unnecessarily spent thanks to the use of collusive algorithms.
And policymakers have noticed this is happening, which isn’t surprising in an era in which “affordability” has the political salience it does. New York recently became the first state to adopt a statewide ban on the use of shared algorithms to set rental housing prices, following the adoption of about a dozen local ordinances doing the same, in cities such as San Francisco, Philadelphia, Providence, Minneapolis, and Jersey City.
New Jersey Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill also campaigned on stopping collusion in rental housing markets, so I wouldn’t be shocked if New Jersey goes next, especially since bills there have already been written and introduced in the state legislature.
But that’s not all. California last month went a step further, outlawing the use of common pricing algorithms across the economy, and making it illegal for one business to coerce another into adopting specific prices. My colleague Lee Hepner explained the specifics here of what could be a truly groundbreaking effort to ensure businesses aren’t bullied by dominant firms into pricing a certain way….
The Smartest Move in New York Politics: Mamdani Appoints Lina Khan to Help Lead Transition.
Shaun King, Nov 14, 2025
Let me say this as plainly as I can. Zohran Mamdani just made the smartest early move a mayor‑elect could make. By putting Lina Khan on his transition team, he signaled that City Hall is not going to tweet about affordability — it’s going to govern it. That one choice tells me he’s deadly serious about systemic change and the hard, legal work it takes to make a city livable.
Khan is not a talker. She’s a lawyer and a builder who excavates old laws and enforces them with precision. As chair of the Federal Trade Commission, she revived dormant authorities most people had forgotten existed — from mass Notices of Penalty Offense to dusting off the Robinson–Patman Act — because the problem wasn’t the absence of rules, it was the absence of will.
Now, in New York City, that same muscle is being aimed at the everyday rip‑offs that make this town feel unlivable:
- a 56‑year‑old city law against “unconscionable” business practices that can protect captive consumers;
- a new state requirement that companies disclose algorithmic pricing;
- and local consumer‑protection tools past administrations barely touched.
I’ve read the reporting: Khan is studying the legal footholds inside city and state code — exactly the stuff mayors ignore until somebody with vision puts it on the table. That’s governance. Not vibes. Not slogans. Receipts….
People will try to brand this as “anti‑business.” That’s lazy. Competition is pro‑consumer. Transparency is pro‑honesty. Enforcement is pro‑fairness. You don’t fix a city by tweeting “corporate greed.” You fix it by naming the exploit, finding the statute, and then bringing the case….
If Capital Strikes Against Mamdani, Organized Worker Power Can Strike Back
[Truthout, via Naked Capitalism 11-14-2025]
Creating new economic potential – science and technology
China builds advanced satellite power system for particle beam and other space weapons
Stephen Chen, 8 Nov 2025 [South China Morning Post]
…To work, a particle beam weapon needs not just massive amounts of energy, but also extreme precision in how that energy is delivered. In a particle accelerator on board a satellite, electromagnetic fields must “push” charged particles at precise moments as they race through different sections.
These energy pulses must maintain almost perfectly in sync, with errors no more than millionths or billionths of a second – microseconds and nanoseconds, respectively. Otherwise, the beam will lose focus, efficiency will drop and the weapon will fail.
This creates a fundamental engineering dilemma: high power and high precision usually do not go together. Systems that deliver megawatts of power tend to be slow to control and systems that are ultra-precise often cannot handle such huge energy bursts, meaning engineers have had to choose between raw power and fine control – never both.
However, Chinese scientists say they have cracked this decades-old dilemma….
Disrupting mainstream economics
Economic questions: The David Graeber question
Richard Murphy, November 14 2025 [Funding the Future]
David Graeber was the anthropologist who re-framed economics by showing that its most basic assumptions were myths.
Where conventional economists traced money to barter and exchange, Graeber traced it to trust and relationships. He argued that the origins of money lay not in markets but in morality: in obligations, promises, and the human capacity for cooperation.
But he also showed how those promises were corrupted: how debt, once a symbol of mutual responsibility, became a mechanism of domination.
Hence the David Graeber Question: if money began as a promise of mutual trust, when did it become the instrument of control that imprisons us?
The economic questions: the Amartya Sen question
Richard Murphy, November 15 2025 [Funding the Future]
Amartya Sen’s work is one of the quiet revolutions in modern political economy. At the very moment when mainstream economics had reduced almost everything to income, prices, and what neoclassical economists call utility, Sen asked a much older and much more human set of questions. What does it mean to live well? What does it mean to avoid needless suffering? What does it mean to be genuinely free, not just on paper, but in the texture of everyday life?
His answer was as simple as it was subversive. We cannot judge a society by what it produces, or even by what it pays, but only by what people are actually able to do and be. He called these real possibilities capabilities, and with that one move, he exposed how shallow and how morally evasive so much of modern economics had become.
Hence, the Amartya Sen Question: If freedom is the capability to live a full human life, why do we still run economies that deny so many people the means to be free?
R.L. Bruckberger, Image of America, New York, NY, Viking Press, 1959.
Chapter 17, “The Only American Economist of Any Importance” [Henry C. Carey, foremost economist of the American School in the mid-1800s]
“The ultimate object of all human effort,” wrote Carey, in a truly remarkable statement, “[is] the production of the being known as Man capable of the highest aspirations.” Here Carey took a decisive step of his own. Nowhere in the theoreticians of the capitalist school, nowhere in Marx and Lenin, can any such words as these be found. Basically, all that concerned Carey was man, and the process whereby man becomes more and more civilized. What Carey sought to create, beyond a theory of political economy, was a theory of civilization itself. For him, man was not only greater than the whole of nature, but even above the victory he won over it. With this victory civilization began, but it still had far, far indeed to go. It still faced the obligation to fulfill man’s “highest aspirations.” In the last analysis, therefore, Carey’s ambition was to construct a philosophy of civilization.
Richard Murphy, November 12 2025 [Funding the Future]
Information age dystopia / surveillance state
Disrupting the first reported AI-orchestrated cyber espionage campaign
[anthropic.com, Nov 13, 2025]
…In mid-September 2025, we detected suspicious activity that later investigation determined to be a highly sophisticated espionage campaign. The attackers used AI’s “agentic” capabilities to an unprecedented degree—using AI not just as an advisor, but to execute the cyberattacks themselves.
The threat actor—whom we assess with high confidence was a Chinese state-sponsored group—manipulated our Claude Code tool into attempting infiltration into roughly thirty global targets and succeeded in a small number of cases. The operation targeted large tech companies, financial institutions, chemical manufacturing companies, and government agencies. We believe this is the first documented case of a large-scale cyberattack executed without substantial human intervention….
[ScheerPost, via Naked Capitalism 11-09-2025]
Palantir CEO Says a Surveillance State Is Preferable to China Winning the AI Race
[Gizmodo, via Naked Capitalism 11-10-2025]
VPNs Keep the Lights On in a Darkening Web
[Reclaim the Net, via Naked Capitalism 11-11-2025]
Climate and environmental crises
The Busiest “Rail Line” You’ve Never Heard Of Is In the Suburbs of Atlanta
[The Transit Guy, via Naked Capitalism 11-10-2025]
Democrats’ political malpractice
The Longest Government Shutdown in U.S. History Ends Without Ameliorating Our Constitutional Crisis
[Notes on the Crises,15 Nov 2025]
Nancy Pelosi made $130M in stock profits during Congress career — a return of 16,930%
[NY Post, via Naked Capitalism 11-09-2025]
[TW: Yeah, probably wrong to call this “malpractice.” Making $130 million was the whole point — a feature, not a bug, of the system. In the 1790s, there was serious discussion of legally prohibiting bankers and financiers from ever holding a seat in Congress.]
Resistance
The one guy Silicon Valley can’t buy. Big Tech is feeling the heat after Pope Leo XIV spoke out on artificial intelligence, calling on leaders to “cultivate moral discernment as a fundamental part of their work” and “develop systems that reflect justice, solidarity, and a genuine reverence for life.” Marc Andreessen — billionaire founder of tech investment firm Andreessen Horowitz and MAGA megadonor — responded by mocking the Pope’s message, but received so much pushback that he deleted his post. Leo XIV is following in the footsteps of his namesake, Leo XIII, who himself challenged the robber barons of the Gilded Age in the 19th century.
- “Billionaires like Andreessen or Peter Thiel can bankroll sympathetic pastors, media outlets, even lobby bishops,” writes one religious politician. “But Pope Leo answers only to God.”
Conservative / Libertarian / (anti)Republican Drive to Civil War
America’s legacy of eugenics is alive and well in Trump’s White House
[Prism, via Naked Capitalism 11-14-2025]
The Politics of Humiliation: Reading Robert Kagan in the midst of America’s nightmare
[The Baffler, via Naked Capitalism 11-15-2025]
Pavlov’s cat / Schrödinger’s dog
[TW: The past few weeks, I occasionally reflected on Trump’s base of supporters and their adherence to half-truths and outright lies. But avoidance of truth in USA and the west stretches far beyond just Trump and his MAGA movement. Trickle down economics is a lie. Supply side economics is a lie. Constitutional orginalism is a lie. LIbertarianism is a lie. Deficit hawkery is a lie. That (anti)Republicans care about deficits is a lie. The influence of Adam Smith and John Locke as beneficial influences on the USA are lies. What happens when an entire society is ruled by people who reject truth? I began cataloguing the lies in a document and thought the title “Pavlov’s cat / Schrödinger’s dog” was amusing, but I’m not sure if many people would understand the irony. So, here it is, being tested on you, dear reader, for the first time. What do you think? ]
Letters from an American, November 13, 2025
Heather Cox Richardson, Nov 14, 2025
We are watching the ideology of the far-right MAGAs smash against reality, with President Donald J. Trump and his cronies madly trying to convince voters to believe in their false world rather than the real one….
Yesterday, White House officials suggested they would never be able to release October’s jobs report or inflation numbers, blaming the Democrats. They did, however, claim that prices are “beginning to drop,” citing DoorDash, the delivery platform, as their source….
Operation Drumbeat — The Right is Loud but Hollow
John Ganz, Nov 12, 2025 [Unpopular Front]
On November 7th, the Wall Street Journal had a long article about the crack-up over antisemitism and Tucker-Fuentes at the Heritage Foundation. One detail in particular jumped out at me:
“Employees working on Ukraine policy were asked to watch Carlson’s monologues, which were rife with conspiracy theories about the war, to delete past tweets in support of Ukraine aid and to write papers reflecting the new, more isolationist policy that Roberts had embraced, according to Luke Coffey, the former director of Heritage’s foreign policy center.”
Putting aside for a moment the wisdom or morality of this policy shift, think for a moment what he’s asking subject matter experts to do: Stop studying their subjects and watch propaganda instead. This reinforces an impression of mine: the Republican Party and the right-wing apparatus in general have become totally dominated by propaganda and propagandists. Important roles that once would go to professionals or at least politicians now go to podcasters and talking heads. And not just in communications. Look at Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense, who comes from Fox News, and Don Bongino, Deputy Director of the FBI, who was a podcaster….
…The right has always striven to create an alternate communications system to battle the influence of “liberal media,” and traditionally it’s not uncommon for a political movement to center itself on a magazine or a newspaper, but now sheer quantity has brought about a qualitative shift.
A recent investigation by Reuters documented the close relationship between the regime and a whole constellation of right-wing influencers seemingly on the outside….
…The issues that the administration tackles come directly out of this propaganda ecosystem: most normal people had not heard of “Tren de Aragua” before. Turns out it’s a major preoccupation of the right-wing media sphere. No puppet master is running the whole thing: it’s just a mutually reinforcing system of inputs and outputs that generates its own sense of reality. The term is a cliché, but it is a real echochamber!
On the one hand, this is extremely sinister. Propaganda as a first principle calls to mind a totalitarian state that forms a distorted, topsy-turvy world of enemies and threats based on paranoia and hysterical denunciation. But what happens when this totalitarian bubble is trying to govern a massive country, most of whose people don’t live inside of it? …..
The dominance of propaganda also underscores Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld’s thesis in their 2024 book The Hollow Parties, in which they argue that, in different ways, both major parties have been hollowed out of their traditional functions. Very crudely put, the Democrats are just a bunch of consultants and NGOs in a spoils system that does not discourage losing because there are always spoils in the next campaign, and the GOP is basically just a career opportunity for agitators and propagandists who are willing to dispense with shame and honor and peddle racist filth. Both systems involve major political weaknesses. And we just saw how they might be defeated: a grassroots campaign that actually hits the streets and mobilizes people. Commentators will try to quarantine Mamdani to weird New York, but the tactics can be employed anywhere and with many ideological inflections: encourage real civic engagement, create new clubs and activities; de-atomize and reintegrate people into a shared project. My hope for the Trump era was always that it would spark a civic and small-d democratic renaissance in response. As big institutions fail or cower, we’re seeing more and more of that.
Laura Loomer’s Endless Payback
Antonia Hitchens, November 10, 2025 [The New Yorker]
… Loomer has few allies, except for the one that matters most.
“I don’t want to say, Oh, President Trump is me, or I see myself in Trump. But I do. I mean, I do,” Loomer told Hitchens. She believes it is her mandate to root out and publicly humiliate the disloyal, the incompetent. “I’ll tag whoever’s in charge of the agency, the offending agency, and I’ll say, are you going to be prepared to tell President Trump how this is in compliance with his agenda?” It often works….
“Barely Legal”: When the Hinge Becomes a Crack-Up
Jim Stewartson, Nov 13, 2025 [Mind War]
The Epstein files don’t just threaten Trump; they threaten the entire ontological universe of his movement.
Jeffrey Epstein and pedophilia have long been at the hinge point of Donald Trump’s ability to project power, dating back to his first presidential campaign. False accusations of child trafficking and sexual abuse have been the currency of Trump’s base since John Podesta’s emails were hacked by the Russians in 2016—and systematically reconstructed into a hoax-mythology aimed at Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.
This mythology metastasized into Pizzagate and QAnon—and now suffuses the entire MAGA belief system. Trump’s moral status as a savior against “deviant pedophile Democrats” is the glue that keeps a large part of his cult on board with his project, regardless of what he says or does.
Meanwhile, the most closely guarded open secret in the world—that Donald Trump committed crimes against children with Jeffrey Epstein—has become impossible for anyone still in contact with objective reality to deny. The latest revelations by House Oversight Democrats—that Trump was a major subject of conversation between Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, and that Trump was “the dog that didn’t bark”—are just one more small step toward the full revelation of his deviant behavior….
As an example of the effect this is having on his followers and punditocracy, former Fox and NBC host Megyn Kelly said this week that trafficking and abusing young teenage girls is not pedophilia after all—it’s “barely legal.”….
This attempt to shatter the Overton Window around child rape is isomorphic to moral shifts around racism, misogyny, and xenophobia. It is a symptom of a regime and a movement sustaining it, trying to reverse moral polarity itself: from order to entropy, from growth to trauma, and from good to evil. It is full-spectrum ontological warfare….
Trump is pardoning virtually everyone he knows; he’s distorting the justice system beyond all recognition to go after his personal enemies; and he’s making sure Ghislaine Maxwell has puppy privileges in cushy Camp Fed. It is comic-book, over-the-top lawlessness—all because of his own collapsing psychology.
A malignant narcissist faced with the void of shame and exposure has no limits beyond his power to change the world around him. Unfortunately, in the case of Donald Trump, he has a lot of power to change the world—and he has engineered it so no one around him will stop him.
Civic republicanism
The Status Interview – Or How To Write Up a Senate Purge List
Josh Marshall, November 11, 2025 [Talking Points Memo]
…there are a series of things senators support or don’t support that gives a clear indication of whether they are serious about confronting the challenge of the moment or battling back from Trumpism….
One: The filibuster. If you support keeping the filibuster you are not serious about moving the country forward in any positive direction… What’s so important about the filibuster question is not only how essential it is itself. It’s that there’s no reason not to do it. The filibuster is an historical accident which perverts how the Constitution is supposed to work….
Two: Supreme Court reform… It’s only in the last three or four years that I’ve come around to the necessity of it and it’s still sometimes hard to get my head around. But it is essential. With the filibuster in place, no broader anti-authoritarian reform, no retrofitting the house is possible. It’s the same with the Supreme Court. The current Republican majority is thoroughly corrupt and has hijacked the Constitution. They have cut free not only from precedent but from any consistent or coherent theory of the Constitution, no matter how wrongheaded. The purpose of the high court is not to run the country. It is to render decisions on points of constitutional and legal ambiguity in a good faith and broadly consistent manner. It is now engaged in purely outcome-driven reasoning, mixing and matching doctrines and modes of jurisprudence depending on the desired ends, with the aim of furthering autocratic and Republican rule. That is the heart of the corruption. Passing laws doesn’t matter if they can and will be discarded simply because six lifetime appointees don’t like them. That’s a perversion of the constitutional order….
Three: Statehood. Making DC and Puerto Rico into states isn’t quite as essential as points one and two…. The most important reason for making DC and Puerto Rico states is that DC and Puerto Rico should in fact be states. (In any other advanced country it would seem bizarre if two jurisdictions just arbitrarily didn’t have the political rights as everyone else.)… What we’ve seen over the last year makes clear this is a very real harm and deprivation of rights, not at all theoretical thing. A renegade president can treat the district and its citizens as conquered territory. DC absolutely needs to be given the sovereignty and structural protections of statehood. The other issue is that making DC and Puerto Rico into states is a very legitimate opportunity to redress some of the current structural Republican advantage in the Senate. That’s good on principle and good politics….
Four: Clearing the law books. As we’ve seen over the last year, the U.S. federal code is full of laws which assume the sitting president broadly supports the federal Constitution, civic democracy and the best interests of all American citizens. We know now that that is a dangerous assumption. There are lots of laws which grant the president vast powers if things get super weird. And the president is in charge of deciding whether they’re weird. A lot of this is the dirty work of the corrupt Republican majority on the Supreme Court. But a lot of the laws are genuinely far too ambiguous. We need to change all of those laws….
Five: Outlaw extreme gerrymandering. …it is essential to have a federal legal framework governing how maps can be legitimately drawn. They cannot be drawn for partisan advantage, to disempower or empower one racial group over another or one region over another. Again there are no perfect maps and no perfect rules. But it cannot be a free-for-all. Because of the corrupt Republican majority on the court it’s now a free-for-all.
[TW: This is an excellent list of measures needed to repair the damage being caused by Trump and a corrupt (anti)Republican Party and Supreme Court. But Marshall, who has never discussed the importance of a philosophy of government, and has been slow and reluctant to accept that oligarchy and the rich are the most dangerous threats to a republic, omits some important measures: ]
Seven Rules for Running a Real Left-wing Government
Ian Welsh, October 23, 2020
So, we have had a right-wing coup in Brazil. In Venezuela, the left still controls the Presidency, but has lost control of parliament. In Argentina, the right has won the election. I have been asked how to stop right-wing reversals….
Don’t Run Your Economy on Resources….
Your First Act Must Be a Media Law
Break them up. Take them over. Whichever. Ignore the screams about media freedom from the usual suspects in the West, this is a case of “freedom of the press belongs to those who own one.” In all three countries, the media conglomerates remained in the control of oligarchs (update: to be clear, Venezuela did eventually expropriate them, but only after many years), and in all three cases, the majority of the media remained relentlessly hostile to the left….
Take Control of the Banking Sector
The banking sector creates money. Money determines what people can and cannot do. This is the control mechanism for the economy in any state which runs on markets. You must control it. If you control it, you can use it to strangle your domestic enemies. If you do not, your enemies will use it to strangle you….
Take Control of Distribution and Utilities
Yeah, sorry, but no one said this would be easy. In Venezuela, you had the economic elite deliberately exacerbating shortages. Huge stocks of consumer goods buried and hidden.
These people have power. They are your enemies. They will use their power against you. They will not “play fair.” ….
Obey the Laws of Purges
Let’s not dance around. Your first step will be to break the power of the current economic and political elites who are not willing to convincingly join you–or, at least, let you rule without trying to sabotage you.
You must do this all at once. When it happens, it has to happen to everyone to whom it is going to happen. This is Machiavelli’s dictum, and he was right. After it has happened, those who weren’t broken know they’re safe as long as they don’t get in your way….
[TW: There are several other measures discussed by Welsh, and I highly recommend you click through and read (or re-read) the entire post. And note the key points Welsh identofies, are paramount in the controversial dismissal of the Whitlam Labor Party government in Australia a half dentury ago: ]
Fifty years since the Whitlam Dismissal
[defenddemocracy.press, Oct 29, 2025]
In 1975 the ruling class in Australia conspired to subvert parliamentary democracy and sack the Labor government. Jean Parker discusses why they did it and the response
Fifty years on, 11 November 1975 remains one of the most controversial and turbulent days in Australian history.
It’s the day Gough Whitlam, the leader of a reforming Labor government that had, since being elected in 1972, formally ended White Australia, ended conscription, founded Medicare and introduced free university education, was sacked by the unelected representative of the Queen of England—the Australian Governor-General, Sir John Kerr.
The Dismissal of the Whitlam government showed that the ruling class is prepared to dispense with democratic institutions when they feel their power and wealth is threatened. Three tools were harnessed to get rid of the Labor government—the media, the Senate, and the Governor-General….
Whitlam was re-elected in 1974, but the ruling class became determined to get Labor out. The trigger would be using the Senate to block supply, thereby cutting off the money supply to the government—for the first and only time in Australian history….
The media whipped up a sense of crisis that backed up the Liberals. Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, which had supported Labor’s election in 1972, now waged an unrelenting destabilisation campaign and began to agitate for Whitlam’s sacking by the Governor-General….
The Republican Health Care Apocalypse
Alex Lawson, Nov 14, 2025 [Common Dreams]
Republicans are obsessed with taking your health care away. This spring, they cut $1 trillion from Medicaid, all to give massive tax handouts to billionaires. For the last month and a half they shut down the government rather than prevent premiums from doubling on average for 24 million people in the Affordable Care Act marketplace. And they “won.”
The number of uninsured Americans is about to skyrocket, which is exactly what Republicans want. It is what they fight for every day; to steal your health care….
[TW: In August 2009, Duke University professor John David Lewis wrote an-op-ed on Real Clear Politics, “What ‘Right’ to Health Care?” arguing
Those who want to see an end to spiraling medical costs should challenge the premises behind the government interventions. The first premise is moral: that medical care is a right. It is not. There was no right to such care before doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies produced it. Health care is a service, which we all need, and none of us are better served by placing our lives and our doctors under coercive bureaucratic control.
[Lewis was an objectivist — a follower of Ayn Rand, who developed her philosophy of self-will and selfishness as a virtue, from her sick fascination with child killers.
[This line of thinking followed by Lewis and Rand was directly from Ludwig von Mises, the anti-republican (pro-oligarchy) bureaucrat and admirer of the Austro-Hungarian empire. In 1922, von Mises wrote “Social Insurance Weakens and Eventually Destroys the Will to Health.”
There is no clearly defined frontier between health and illness. Being ill is not a phenomenon independent of conscious will and of psychic forces working in the subconscious. A man’s efficiency is not merely the result of his physical condition; it depends largely on his mind and will. Thus the whole idea of being able to separate, by medical examination, the unfit from the fit and from the malingerers, and those able to work from those unable to work, proves to be untenable. Those who believed that accident and health insurance could be based on completely effective means of ascertaining illnesses and injuries and their consequences were very much mistaken. The destructionist aspect of accident and health insurance lies above all in the fact that such institutions promote accidents and illness, hinder recovery, and very often create, or at any rate intensify and lengthen, the functional disorders which follow illness or accident….
Overwhelming statistics show that insured persons take much longer time to recover from their injuries than other persons, and that they are liable to more extensions and permanent functional disturbances than those of the uninsured. Insurance against diseases breeds disease. Individual observation by doctors as well as statistics prove that recovery from illnesses and injuries is much slower in officials and permanent employees and people compulsorily insured than in members of the professions and those not insured. The desire and the necessity of becoming well again and ready for work as soon as possible assist recuperation to a degree so great as to be capable of demonstration.
[Note von Mises’s concern with “a man’s efficiency” and being “ready for work.” Yes, absolutely — a sick or injured person is more inclined to return to work if they have little or no money left, and the debt collecting wolves are howling just outside the door. But how efficient is it to have a sick or injured person answer customer service calls? How much patience will they have to solve customer’s problems? How efficient is it to have a sick or injured person drive a truck cross-country, or fly a plane? Or operate a power plant and power grid?
[Also note how neatly this anti-republican, anti-humanity philosophy dovetails with the belief that empathy is a weakness, as lately expressed by Elon Musk and other tech-bro transhumanists.
[Counter to this anti-republican, anti-humanity philosophy is the clear intent of the USA republic, as stated in the Preamble of the Constitution: Promote the General Welfare, and the philosophy of civic republicanism behind it. ]
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